Jerry Sloan

Jerry Sloan isn't ready to retire to his Illinois farm yet. Sloan, whose 15 seasons with Utah is the longest tenure among any coach or manager in the four major professional sports, said Tuesday he has agreed to a contract extension that will keep him with the Jazz through 2006. "When the season was over I was very concerned about whether I would be able to put the energy into it," Sloan said.

Utah Jazz Coach Jerry Sloan drew a seven-game suspension Wednesday for shoving an official in the chest during the first quarter of Tuesday's game against the Kings at Sacramento, another in what seems to be a string of incidents involving players, coaches and referees in the past month. It's also one of the longest suspensions in the last 10 seasons, joining two other incidents in which players were involved in confrontations with officials.

Sam Smith in the Chicago Tribune on Utah Jazz Coach Jerry Sloan: "[He] has more than 800 coaching victories, ranking him among the NBA's top 10 of all time in wins, winning percentage, playoff wins and playoff games coached. "But no championship. " 'It's not something I lose sleep over,' Sloan said. 'Not like getting the best buy on a tractor. Basically, I'm a farmer and probably always will be.' " Anyway, that's his spin.

Well, we always knew he wasn't exactly normal. Forty-two years later, it's hard to remember how perfect it was He lived, died inside and rose again annually to go on another quest but with no idea what one would do with the grail. Uh, put it on the mantel? In 1972, when he won his only NBA title in his 12th season, his teammate and close friend, Pat Riley, who had danced him off the floor, noted that West just "came into the locker room, had a sip of champagne, shook a few hands and left."

Bob Ryan in the Boston Globe: "In a sports world gone financially and behaviorally mad, the Jazz are the oasis of true sanity. The coach never leaves. The two marquee players never retire. The team never stops winning. "Go ahead. Peruse the NBA standings. Check out the Midwest Division. At the top of the list you will find the solid, reliable, unshakable Utah Jazz, led by their solid, reliable, unshakable coach, Jerry Sloan. . . .

Shaquille O'Neal started Sunday a tenth of a point ahead of Philadelphia's Allen Iverson in the scoring race and two-tenths of a rebound behind Dikembe Mutombo in that race. No one has won both since Wilt Chamberlain in 1965 but Phil Jackson says O'Neal may be missing something important the rest of the way--minutes. "We'll probably be cutting back more than anything else with Shaquille and the rest of our players," Jackson said before Sunday's game.

Portland's Mike Dunleavy was named the NBA coach of the year Friday. Dunleavy is not the best coach in the Western Conference. He's not even the best coach in his current series. That distinction belongs to Jerry Sloan of Utah, although he'll never get the hardware to prove it. Even though Pat Riley is the only active coach with a higher winning percentage than Sloan, you never hear them mentioned in the same sentence.